This invention relates to an assembly for cooling vehicle parts. Specifically, the parts which may be cooled pursuant to the present invention include the dashboard and the hat rack surfaces in the passenger compartment of an automotive vehicle.
West German Offenlegungsschrift No. 26 03 297 discloses an assembly for cooling parts of an automotive vehicle, such as the tank space, which are heated through exposure to solar radiation. In addition, that patent document discloses the use of air from the passenger compartment to absorb heat. Spent air from the passenger compartment, prior to discharge into the atmosphere, is conducted along the heated vehicle parts for cooling those parts. In brief, vehicle parts outside the passenger compartment are cooled with air from the passenger compartment after the air has left the compartment.
In another assembly for cooling vehicle components, described in West German Offenlegungsschrift No. 27 20 714, the parts to be cooled are provided on their external surfaces with air conduction canals formed by molded parts. The molded parts are generally of heat insulating material and are shaped as plates each provided on a flat side with a multiplicity of parallel slots or baffles, each slot forming an air flow canal for air from the passenger compartment. The air flow canals are separated from each other by bracing or support ribs. Such a molded part can be positioned with the ribs on the bottom of the vehicle so that the flat side of the molded part is facing into the interior of the vehicle. With this arrangement also, vehicle parts located outside the passenger compartment are cooled.
It is well known that the front and rear windows of aerodynamically designed automobiles are oriented at relatively small angles with respect to the horizontal and are enlarged, with the result that a large amount of thermal energy is transmitted by solar radiation into the interiors of the vehicles. In middle European climates, the the passenger compartment of such a vehicle at rest may attain temperatures of 50 degrees Centigrade. When such a vehicle is moving, the heat transferred to the vehicle's passenger compartment by solar radiation can be removed from the vehicle in the absence of air conditioning only by introducing large amounts of air into the vehicle, exemplarily through open windows or an open roof. Opening the windows or roof of the automobile increases air resistance and defeats the aerodynamic design of the automobile's body.
The enlarged and flattened windows of the aerodynamically designed automobiles are accompanied by larger dashboard and hat rack surfaces at the front and the rear of the vehicles. Moreover, to eliminate reflections of the dashboard and hat rack surfaces in the front and rear windows, those surfaces are provided with a dark color, frequently black, which coloring greatly increases the extent to which incident solar radiation is absorbed by the surfaces and subsequently transferred into the passenger compartments of the vehicles.
An object of the present invention is to provide an improved method for reducing the heat transferred to the interior of a vehicle by incident solar radiation.
Another, related, object of the present invention is to provide an improved assembly for reducing the heat transferred to the interior of a vehicle by incident solar radiation.
Another, more specific, object of the present invention is to provide such an assembly which is simple and relatively inexpensive to manufacture.
Yet another specific object of the present invention is to provide such an assembly in which maintenance is simplified and facilitated.